Why Patty Gasso Cherishes Each Mother's Day
Patty Gasso at OU's Marita Hynes Field
OU Athletics
Janet Froehlich was a single mom, a working mom.
Raising three kids in Torrance, Calif., putting them through private school so they could overachieve, showing them the value of a dollar and the importance of hard work, she scraped and saved and sacrificed so they might succeed.
Winning 1,280 Division I softball games and four national championships is the least Patty Gasso could do to pay tribute to the woman who gave her so much.
“My passion for coaching was really to kind of honor my mother,” Gasso said, “like living the dream that she never got to live.”
Mother’s Day is special to Gasso not just because of her own two sons, J.T. and D.J. She commemorates the event every year because of the woman who made her what she is today: her mom.
When she was little, Gasso and her brother and sister would get home from school with strict instructions from their mom: change out of your school clothes and go across the street to Normandale Park and play until I get home from work.
“I would open up my back gate,” Gasso said, “and I was in the park.”
Mrs. Froehlich would call the park director and ask if he saw her children. Affirmative.
“Without even knowing it,” Gasso said, “he was our babysitter.”
Patty Gasso at the WCWS.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
That’s where her love for softball came from, though she says she was probably better at flag football. That and, when her mom did get home before dark, she’d join them.
“She would get home from work and head straight over to the park,” Gasso said. “She was a secretary, to start with, and would come in her dress clothes and ran straight out — didn’t even change her clothes — and she would practice with us.”
Her mother taught young Patty that women can be good at sports, too.
“My mom was a very good athlete as well, but she just didn’t have the same opportunities as maybe even I did,” Gasso said. “It was very not socially acceptable back when she was playing, or when she was young, in like, the early ‘40s, late ‘40s. It was not something that girls really did. So to see my mom really do some things on the field, I was just in ‘wow’ of that.
“Because she was very athletic, but she was very beautiful, too. She was more of the socialite type than really (showed) her love for sports. She just kind of hid it. So I just knew this was something I really loved doing and I wanted to be good at it.”
Through the years, Gasso has seen flashes of her young self in the players she coaches. Not often, but they’re there.
Patty Gasso in Oklahoma City.
AP Photo/Alonzo Adams
“Usually it’s the dads, you know?” Gasso said. “Even the female athletes, it’s usually the dads who played with them. But my dad just was not present like my mother.”
“Being present” with her own kids – or, not being present – is what nearly drove Gasso to leave Oklahoma. This was back before the good times rolled.
The So Cal girl played at El Camino Junior College and Long Beach State, and she had carved out a nice coaching career at Long Beach City College. But five years after taking the OU job, Gasso found herself spread too thin. She was left longing for more.
Not more wins or more championships or more glory.
More family.
“I didn’t think I could survive living my life like this because it was so engulfing,” she said. “It just owned my life. And I’m trying to raise two kids?”
She liked Oklahoma just fine, and the Sooner program was certainly in better shape than she found it. But before the 2000 season, she and her husband Jim had decided he would take a job back home, and after the season was over, she would join him. Non-stop recruiting and crushing expectations had taken their toll.
She was finished.
“The reason why I was gonna go back was I just didn’t feel like I was doing a very good job at either,” Gasso said. “I wasn’t giving enough time to my kids, yet I needed to get on the recruiting trail. I was on the phone, every night, trying to recruit over the phone.
“I will always remember, my youngest son, I would read him a book to go to bed, and I would always fall asleep first. He was always waking me up, ‘Mom! Finish! Finish!’ It was just constantly like that. But I was gonna go back because I just felt like I wasn’t being good at anything. I was being average as a coach and as a mother.”
Her own mom had shown her how to provide for the family and yet still be a great mom, a present mom. She felt she was falling short of that standard.
Then destiny stepped in.
Gasso’s team won the 2000 national championship, and her future was set on a different path.
Now Gasso has four national titles and a $950,000-a-year contract (USA Today reported it as $1.22 million, including bonuses) that runs through 2026. She’s the highest-paid coach in her sport. The most successful, too.
And she owes it to her mom, with whom she used to listen to Vin Scully call Dodgers games.
“My mom and I were sports fanatics who spent a lot of time just constantly watching sports,” Gasso said. “I knew I wanted to do this for her.”
Mrs. Froehlich now lives in San Pedro, Calif., though she and the family are battling Alzheimer’s.
“It hollows you out,” Gasso said.
After the Sooners won Gasso’s fourth national championship in 2017, Gasso had her usual postgame obligations — media, players, parents, her own family. Eventually, she called her mom.
It was too late.
“I called her probably a couple hours after and she didn’t even remember watching it,” Gasso said.
Such is the scourge of Alzheimer’s. Windows open. Then they close.
But when Janet watched OU softball, the window stayed open.
“(A replay) came on the next day,” Gasso said, “and I pretended like, ‘Mom, we’re playing in the World Series!’ And as soon as the game was over, I called her. It was rerun, but she was so happy.
“I’ve just got to do things like that. I know that’s the way I can connect with her. Even though it might be the fourth time she sees it, if I can call her like right after it happens, then we share that moment.
“And then it just goes away.”
Gasso will never give up on her mom. Her mom certainly never gave up on her.
“She put us through private school by taking out loans and — all kinds of ways to do it,” Gasso said. “I just knew that I needed to dedicate my life to her honor, and I try to do that every day.”
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